goo wrote:There has been almost no effort to make melee more interesting throughout the entire game's lifespan, at least in comparison to other aspects of the game. Wasn't some kind of weapon specialization supposed to be implemented in 0.10? (I thought Polearms all getting reaching was the start of that?) Maybe you could have held off on the MD removal until that was finished? Make the different weapon types all handle differently, and have each of the races specialize in different weapon types?
I agree, melee is pretty boring as it is, and I, along with what I assume is still a good chunk of the devteam, would like to see weapon specialization. It would definitely help differentiate melee-based species, and I agree that if it gets involved, then MDs could probably be given another shot. But looking at the devwiki discussions, it seems like the main problem is that the devs are having a hard time working out the best way to do that in a way that makes weapons significantly but not obtrusively different -- not to mention finding an implementation that's obviously good enough to convince someone to write the code. You can't just type "make weapons different" into your C++ editing software.
I remember one of the devs posting here, shaking his head about how there were a ton of ideas that ended with "it might need a bit of balancing and tweaking", as if coming up with an idea was the hardest part, and evaluating, coding, adjusting, and balancing the rest of the game was easy, and I've remembered that pretty much every time I read or think of a suggestion. Saying "you should implement weapons specialization!" is true, but it doesn't really make it any easier to think up actual specifics that you can write up.
This is but one of many of the arguments brought against the change, and one of many proposals to make the races play differently. The thread was filled with them.
Yeah, but were they any good? Simply providing a suggestion doesn't automatically solve the problem (and more so if the suggestion is tucked into a post between "Fuck you!" and "You hate new players!")
A lot of the suggestions read like they were the first cool idea the player thought of, without considering whether it would make an actual major difference between MD or Mi, or make one of those species over/underpowered. For instance, trample resistance would be a cool feature for a MD, but how often in an average game do you actually get trampled? It wouldn't be any kind of difference in actuality. Likewise, it turns out that making dwarves small didn't make things much different in practice. I saw innate berserk (+RAGE) suggested for both MD and Mi, but always-available berserk with no resource scarcity or divine restrictions involved would just be crazy overpowered. And, conversely, suggesting innate berserkitis (*RAGE) for Mi would make them terrible for melee, the one thing they're good at.
That's one of the main reasons I like File200's Forge Dwarves proposal so much, not just because it tries to bring back the cool heavy-armor casting MDs were sometimes used for, but because he actually wrote that shit up and is playtesting it.
Basically, what I'm getting at is this: Yes, dpeg and other devs can sometimes come across as arrogant (sorry, man, it's true (player paralysis is terrible)). But I don't think that they ignored the MD-revival suggestions in that thread simply because they're arrogant elitists who hate the fan base. I think they ignored the MD-revival suggestions primarily because most of them weren't very well thought out.
edit: ah motherfucker you guys already got off that topic